I didn't pick up "Change or Die," Alan Deutschman's 2007 book, for any reasons related to my food or sustainability interests. It was recommended, somewhat forcefully, by Sid Falthzik, who is helping to mentor me in the Fast Track Speaker Academy put on the New England Chapter of the National Speaker Association.

I wrote a few days ago about lawyer/author/thought leader Lawrence Lessig's conversation with David Gergen at Harvard Law School last week, and thought I'd just clean out my notebook a bit, 'cause this stuff is interesting and also 'cause I love the traffic that #lessig brings.

Another bite from "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book:

Another snippet from Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Vegetable Miracle":

... To the extent that it is understood, this [American] cuisine is widely assumed to be the property of the elite. Granted, in restaurants it can sometimes be pricey, but the do-it-yourself version is not. I am not sure how so many Americans came to believe only our wealthy are capable of honoring a food aesthetic. Anyone who thinks so should have a gander at the kitchens of working-class immigrants from India, Mexico, anywhere really. Cooking at home is cheaper than buying packaged foods or restaurant meals of comparable quality. Cooking good food is mostly a matter of having the palate and the skill. [page 31]

As in my first installment of this series, I am completely down with the author in spirit and intention, but I have a quibble.

To me, the foremost bar is neither palate nor skill. It is willingness to make the effort, which she almost gets to in her next paragraph when she raises "attitude."

Cooking for one's family and oneself has definite, quantifiable benefits — nutritional, relational, financial — but to get them, we'd have to bother, and it's just easier to hit the drive-thru.

Too many Americans think it's the same thing, and if so, they'd rather relax. The thing is, it isn't so.

I'm finally reading "Animal Vegetable Miracle," Barbara Kingsolver's 2007 book in which she and her family eat for a year only with local sources, save for one personal exception each. As I've done with other books, I thought I'd blog along.

Jean Fain, 55, of Concord, Mass., is a longtime friend and colleague, though it is coincidental that we both ended up professionally concerned and active in the fight against obesity. When we met, we were working at the Boston Globe.

Though I beat her to the presses by a month or two, Jean is a whirlwind of activity. In addition to her book “The Self-Compassion Diet, A Step-by-Step Program to Lose Weight with Loving-Kindness,” Jean is a psychotherapist in private practice and a teaching associate at the Cambridge (Mass.) Health Alliance.

I recently asked her to engage in an interview form I enjoy, in which the questions, and answers, are 10 words or less. Please note: it’s not a strict rule, and I’ve done some editing as well.

I didn't plan it this way, but this first week of 2011 has turned out to be a whirlwind of outreach for "Fat Boy Thin Man."

Monday, an interview I did with Crop To Cuisine aired in New York, Austin, Denver, and several other markets. I haven't been able to hear it yet, but I felt that the interaction with my interviewer, Dov Hirsch, was excellent, and I'm hopeful for the edited version.

I had some pretty good selfish reasons to want not to like "Born Round," New York Timesman Frank Bruni's memoir, but I was unable to escape the obvious: The book is terrific.

I won't give a full-fledged rave because, with his perch at the NYT, his incredible connections beyond, his stunning array of to-die-for blurbers, his impossbily accomplished resume, and his sophisticated-but-not-showy writing style, he doesn't need it.

I wanted to call your attention to the book of this post's title, which I read a couple of weeks ago. Burt Nordstrand, a successful Upper Midwestern businessman, wrote it with Carol Pine; its subhead is "An Exploration of Addiction and Recovery."

A friend who's highly, highly placed in the columnist universe and has written a number of books once told me, "There's only two good days when you write a book. The day it comes out and the day you get the dough." [I'd ID him/her, but it was a private comment.]